Sports

June 16, 2015

Last week the Journal Communication and Sport published a new study from UCLA and Perdue University researchers, which is a 5-year update to a 25 year longitudinal study on media coverage of women’s sports. They found that the amount of coverage of these sports “remains dismally low” despite the “dramatic movement of women and girls to sports.” Among outlets examined, coverage of women’s sports events dropped from 5% in 1989 to only 3.2% in 2014- even though viewership has risen across most sports, including soccer.

Believe it or not, there’s a sizable audience out there. Monday’s Team USA opener against Australia drew the largest television audience on record for a Women’s World Cup stage game. The 2011 Women’s World Cup final between the U.S. and Japan was ESPN’s most-watched soccer broadcast ever. And ABC’s most-viewed soccer match of all time is still the 1999 Women’s World Cup final.

The amount of coverage of this year’s Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Women’s World Cup has paled in comparison to last year’s men’s tournament. As one journalist described, unlike for the Men’s World Cup last year, for the Women’s

There are no auto-populated Google results for the match schedule. No CNN breaking news alerts for game results. Fox Sports, which is providing coverage of the tournament, didn’t create a bracket for fans. Even poor Siri [who the journalist asked for a game time] is lost.

But it’s not only women’s sports events that are being under-covered. It seems the injuries these athletes receive are under-covered too- despite medical evidence that shows women and girls are twice as likely to get a concussion during a sports game. News coverage of the dangers of concussions has received increased popularity. Nearly every week another report comes out about the risks of head injuries caused by sports. (See, for example, [here], [here]) These stories- mostly focused on men’s sports- are only telling half the story.

"We hear about concussion a lot as a boys' problem, mostly because of (American) football, but in sports where the rules are the same, it turns out that women are actually at a higher risk. Women in general have smaller necks and smaller muscle mass. (They have) less strong neck muscles. The bigger the mass is, the harder it is to move. So when (a typical male head) gets hit there is less movement, you have less possibility for brain movement injury."

In addition, the American Medical Association recently recognized the growing problem of concussions in women’s/girl’s sports and instituted new guidelines to help parents and coaches deal with these types of injuries. Writes Reuters:

The influential doctors' group recommended that young athletes suspected of having a concussion be removed immediately from a game and permitted to return only with a doctor's written approval.… Fifty-nine percent of middle-school girl soccer players reported playing with concussion symptoms, with less than half assessed by a doctor or other qualified health professional, the AMA said, citing a recent study.

But the practice of leagues and institutions ignoring the problem of concussions in women’s soccer may be coming to a close- partially because of the attention being drawn by some high-profile lawsuits recently filed. In her suit filed last week against the University of Illinois, Casey Conine, a former women’s soccer player, claims her head injury was mishandled and the team ignored protocol. As a result of her injuries, she was forced to drop out of school and suffers from debilitating headaches. According to the New York Times,

Per Illinois’s concussion guidelines, players must be evaluated by a physician before returning to full-contact activity, but Conine said she was sent on a trip to the East Coast two weeks later and told by the trainer, Brittany Scott, that she was cleared to play, despite no follow-up examination by a doctor. Against Maryland, Conine played 65 minutes in a double-overtime game and repeatedly headed the ball. Coming off the field, she said, she felt as if she would vomit.

The suit seeks an injunction that would change the way soccer is played at all levels. Children under 17 would be limited in how many times they could head the ball. The suit also seeks to require professional and other advanced leagues, which are currently limited to three substitutions a game, to allow temporary substitutions while a player is examined for a head injury. Medical testing would also be available for soccer players who competed as long ago as 2002 and are now coping with the effects of concussions.

The filing (by Conine against the University of Illinois) comes while a federal judge is considering a proposed settlement in a class-action head-injury lawsuit brought against the N.C.A.A., and it highlights the fact that head-trauma issues go beyond American football. An N.C.A.A. study estimated that its women’s soccer players sustained over 5,700 concussions from 2004 to 2009, more than one and a half times the number for men’s soccer players.

And there are signs that show FIFA may be taking these injuries seriously (especially in the wake of the NFL’s $1 billion concussion-related settlement). In response to what some are calling the “silent epidemic” of concussion injuries in women’s soccer, the league met with players last week to put them “on notice” that risky behavior would be deterred through the use of yellow and red penalty cards. The league is also discussing rule changes as past of it’s lawsuit settlement.

But even in light of the most recent responses, some still believe that FIFA and other sports leagues are not doing enough to protect the players. Some athletes, like Ali Krieger of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, have started to wear a specialty headband made of military grade materials that is designed to protect the skull from a hard impact. Other headgear is being developed that would alert coaches and trainers to when a player may have been injured.

"I think any sort of head, concussion issues, it's a big deal," [said USA forward Abby Wambach]. "You wanna make sure everybody leaves the game in as good condition as they came to it."

May 07, 2015

One of my favorite Emily Lattella “SNL Weekend Update” commentaries begins, “What's all this fuss I keep hearing about violins on television?” She meant “violence” of course, a word that’s been connected to a lot of sports stories lately. It’s interesting that the word “violation” comes from the same Latin root. Violence and violations – and sports.

Let’s begin with “deflategate”. Seems like New England Patriots personnel committed some violations. Some are already lumping Tom Brady into a notorious list of cheating sports stars. Some kind of team punishment may be coming. The Boston Heraldwrites today, quoting ESPN NFL business analyst Andrew Brandt:

“Again, the NFL, (league commissioner) Roger Goodell, (executive vice president of football operations) Troy Vincent, they’re not bound by any previous decisions at all. It does lead to the accusation of the ‘making it up as they go along’ if some teams get this, kind of a legal term, ‘respondeat superior’: liability extends above those who are doing the act. If some teams get that and the Patriots don’t, I think that would open the NFL up to a lot of criticism.”

“Making it up as they go along.” Seems like just yesterday this NFL received this precise criticism over its handling of domestic violence. And disrespect for women appears to continue as an epidemic in that sport. For example, writes the San Jose Mercury News:

The woman who reported being raped late last year by Chicago Bears linebacker Ray McDonald -- only to be sued by him for defamation -- filed a cross-complaint Wednesday, claiming that a home-surveillance video shows that both McDonald and 49ers linebacker Ahmad Brooks sexually molested her after she slipped on a wet swimming-pool deck and suffered a traumatic brain injury.…

McDonald had been in hot water months earlier, after his pregnant fiancé accused him of roughing her up. District Attorney Jeff Rosen declined to press domestic violence charges, claiming there was insufficient evidence in a case where the alleged victim refused to cooperate with investigators.

Of course, allegations of “roughing up” women aren’t limited to football players. Take boxing. Take Floyd Mayweather, in particular. Reports of his beating women, particularly the mothers of his children, have been out there for a while. And this week, reports TMZ,

Josie Harris, who has 3 kids with Floyd, claims he lied through his teeth in an interview with Katie Couric, just 2 week before the big fight... when he claimed Josie was in a drug-fueled rage and he had to "restrain" her during their infamous 2010 domestic violence incident.

Point of fact ... Floyd was convicted of domestic violence and spent two months in jail.

Josie recounts her terror in the lawsuit, explaining how she and Floyd had broken up ... but he flew into a jealous rage that night, broke into her home and viciously attacked her while she was sleeping on her couch ... and her kids saw part of the beating.

Yet this isn’t even the biggest news controversy surrounding last weekend’s Mayweather- Pacquiao fight. Writes CNN, "Fans seem peeved for a slew of reasons: the fight was one-sided and kinda boring, Pacquiao had a bum shoulder and kept it a secret, and some people in the United States paid $100 to watch that thing while others paid absolutely nothing."

There are now five class action lawsuits filed against “Manny Pacquiao and his promoters for failing to disclose his [shoulder] injury before consumers purchased tickets and pay-per-view telecasts for his fight against Floyd Mayweather.” For example, in Nevada, “The suit alleges that Pacquiao and his manager Michael Koncz, his promotional company Top Rank, its chairman Bob Arum and its president Todd duBoef, admitted that they knew of his shoulder injury after the fight, but failed to disclose it to the Nevada Athletic Commission as required by law.”

May 21, 2014

I don’t know about you, but I can’t WAIT for the 2014 edition of that book, Eat This, Not That! Every year they expand into new areas, like in 2013 they took a fresh look at onion rings. They’ve got all kinds of survival guides, versions for kids and even an iPhone App. Next time, though, I’d like to suggest that they really expand. In fact, they’ll need a new (albeit cumbersome) name: Put This In Your Mouth or Your Pet’s Mouth or Your Ear, Not That! Here are some new “Not That’s” that I’d like to suggest they feature.

If you’re an NFL player, don’t put that physician prescribed pill in your mouth! Some “former NFL players filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday alleging the league routinely and illegally provided them with prescription pills and various painkillers, putting their health at risk, in order to keep them on the field.” This not only messed up their physical bodies, it turned them into drug addicts. (This news, by the way, is on top of more bad news for football players. A new study shows that, “The brains of college football players are subtly different from the brains of other students, especially if the players have experienced a concussion in the past.”)

If you’ve got an itchy ear, don’t put drops manufactured by Cincinnati-based Masters Pharmaceuticals Inc. in it! Recently, U.S. Marshals “seized more than $11 million of unapproved drugs” distributed by Masters Pharmaceuticals including:

Pramoxine-HC Otic Drops, intended to treat infections of the external ear and control itching.

"None of these products have been proven safe or effective for their intended uses," the Food and Drug Administration said in a release. "The FDA recommends that consumers consult a health care professional about the continuing use of these drug products."

If you’re sick, don’t take the generic antibiotic cephalosporin made at India’s Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd's Karkhadi plant! Actually this should never happen since there’s an FDA-imposed import ban on this drug. The ban is part of “a wave of restrictions, warnings and bans on Indian generic drug firms over the past one year” due to “serious manufacturing and quality control problems.”

If you’re a dog or a person even, don’t put jerky treats from China in your mouth! ReportsNBC, “Petco became the first national pet retail chain to remove all China-made dog and cat treats today when it announced that it would stop selling the products in its more than 1,300 locations by the end of the year. The move by one of the nation's top two pet retailers comes just days after the FDA announced that jerky treats, mostly imported from China, have now been linked with more than 1,000 dog deaths and nearly 5,000 illnesses in dogs, cats and, for the first time, even people."

All of these examples come from just this week’s news. They're gonna need a bigger book.

March 21, 2014

“We all live in …” is often part of a solidarity rallying cry, like “We all live in Wisconsin” expressing unity against union busting, or “We all live in Bhopal” showing support after the devastating 1984 gas disaster. ("We all live in a Yellow Submarine" does not count!)

So today, we all live in Arbitration Land. If it takes professional dancers to make you understand that you live there too, then so be it. In this case, those dancers would be the Oakland Raider cheerleaders who are trying to file a class action against the Raiders for “routinely breaking California labor law” by being paid less than minimum wage and working under “a paternalistic set of rules that not only infantilizes grown women, but also makes demands that no employer should have the right to make.” Plus, they get paid only once, at the end of the season.

I say “trying” because then this happened:

In the team’s first official response to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday, Raiders’ attorneys say that when the Raiderettes signed their contracts, they signed away their rights to sue in court.

Like many lopsided contracts that favor employer rights over employee rights, the Raiders claim that the cheerleaders' contract requires arbitration. The Raiders have asked Alameda County Superior Court Judge Wayne Carvill to put the lawsuit on hold and force Lacy T. and Sarah G. to plead their case with the NFL commissioner.

That's right.

Rather than presenting their case before an impartial judge, the women's claims would be evaluated by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who would be free to ignore rules of evidence, rules of discovery and state labor laws. He can demand the whole process be cloaked in secrecy, and he can also demand the outcome be kept confidential. The cheerleaders would not be able to appeal in any court or forum.…

More than a quarter of American companies, employing some 36 million workers, or one-third of the non-union workforce, say they require arbitration for employment disputes. The [National Employment Lawyers Assn.], which supports voluntary arbitration, says the practice not only denies American workers access to justice, but from the get-go stacks the deck against workers, who often must agree to forced arbitration as a condition of employment.…

Last spring, two members of Congress, U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) introduced the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2013. It would amend federal arbitration law by making it unlawful for employers to impose arbitration on employees, except when they knowingly and voluntarily agree to it after a dispute arises.

Unfortunately, the issue is not at the top of anyone's most pressing political list at the moment. But it should be.

Welcome to Arbitration Land, a place where none of us want to reside but where we are increasingly being forced to live. For example, do you use Dropbox for your files? Then you probably received an email lately telling you that unless you opt out of the brand new forced arbitration clause in your terms of service, you will never be able to sue Dropbox even if the company cheats you.

Some groups who are part of the coalition, Fair Arbitration Now, have started a petition effort to “call on Dropbox to remove from its terms of service the language that undermines our constitutional rights to justice.” In other words, Dropbox needs to drop its forced arbitration clause. Please sign here!

January 31, 2014

I know. Who doesn't want to be in this picture right now? But if instead you are headed to Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ for the Super Bowl this Sunday, don’t worry about the weather. Might be a little cold (although not polar vortex cold) but at least it’s not supposed to rain, which is good news because among the very long list of things you can’t bring into the stadium are umbrellas. Also, no beach balls. Oh well. (Perhaps they meant “snow balls”?)

Anyway, in addition to the umbrella ban, Met Life stadium is taking all kinds of safety precautions. NBC News notes that there will be “more than 3,000 security guards, 700 cops and hundreds of high-tech gadgets” as people enter. In fact, law enforcement is launching “the biggest and most-expensive security net in the 48-year history of the game.” However,

This Super Bowl, says Ed Hartnett, former head of the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Unit, “truly defines the word ‘challenge’ when it comes to security.”

There is no intelligence indicating that terrorists have targeted the game or related events, but Hartnett says that doesn’t mean that threats don’t exist: “I would list them in priority order being a suicide bomber, a vehicle laden with explosives and a mass shooter or mass shooters similar to the Kenyan mall, or the Mumbai incidents,” he said. His concerns are echoed by law enforcement officials overseeing the game.

Also, “Of particular concern for security officials are potential bombings like those that killed 34 people in a railway station and on a trolley in Russia ahead of the upcoming Sochi Olympics, said Col. Rick Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police."

Not that we’re trying to scare anyone. But here’s another fun fact that nobody really wants to talk about. If for some reason you attend the Super Bowl and the terrorist security precautions fail, there won’t be much that you can do about it. Well, you can try to hold someone accountable but you won’t get very far in court against Met Life Stadium, that's for sure.

The stadium boasts in its Super Bowl press packet that it is the “first NFL Stadium to be ‘Safety Act Certified’ by the Department of Homeland Security (2013).” We have covered this law before – you can read more about it here. It means that the stadium has “wide-ranging immunity from future lawsuits that might stem from terrorist attacks” i.e., any and all spectators have lost their right to sue for damages.

As Walter Cooper, director of research and education for the University of Southern Mississippi's National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security said earlier, "The NFL has Safety Act approval for its security management system, which means if there is a major incident in an NFL stadium, the league and the team are going to be in a lot better place in terms of litigation that might take place." That means spectators won't be.

If the NFL is so concerned with litigation, perhaps it should figure out how to stop players’ concussive brain injuries, especially since, “Three-quarters of a billion dollars might not be enough to pay former NFL players for damage from the bone-jarring, brain-rattling hits they took on the gridiron,” according to the federal judge who was reviewing a proposed settlement between damaged players and the NFL. Just sayin'.

September 03, 2013

We’re back after a long and restful August, and who better
to honor with our first story back than one of the most hated people in
baseball! That, of course, would be Yankee third
baseman Alex Rodriguez.

Sure, A-Rod has his problems. But here’s something we actually like about
him: he understands how the U.S. justice system is supposed to work. This week, his appeal process begins over his
211 game suspension over a scandal involving performance enhancing drugs. But that’s not all. He’s also considering filing a medical
malpractice lawsuit! This would be
“against Yankees team doctor Chris Ahmad for failing to properly diagnose the
torn labrum in his left hip during last October’s playoffs.”

“This is America,” [says A-Rod], “And we do have an opportunity to protect
ourselves. And I’ve chosen to take that route.”

Well, let’s put it this way. He
has the opportunity to protect himself.
That’s because he lives in a state that does not cap damages in medical malpractice
lawsuits and even if he lived in such a state, he’s wealthy enough to pay his
attorney by the hour – unlike 99% of Americans who have no access to hourly attorneys. Their attorneys are paid on contingency. And in
those situations, caps on damages can make such cases prohibitively expensive
to bring. (See more in
this Center for Justice & Democracy report)

Just look at the situation in Texas. Over the weekend, the Austin American Statesmanreported on the dramatic decline in med mal
cases and payouts since the state capped damages in 2003.

Specifically, “medical
malpractice claims, including lawsuits, resolved in a year fell by nearly
two-thirds between 2003 and 2011 to 450. The average payout declined 22 percent
to about $199,000.”

And that drop isn’t because
of patient safety improvements in Texas, believe me. Check out thisTexas Observer article last
week about
Dr. Christopher Duntsch who, “came to Dallas to start a neurosurgery practice
[and] by the time the Texas Medical Board revoked his license in June 2013,
Duntsch had left two patients dead and four paralyzed in a series of botched
surgeries.” Writes the Texas Observer,

But the real tragedy of the Christopher Duntsch story is how
preventable it was. Over the course of 2012 and 2013, even as the Texas Medical
Board and the hospitals he worked with received repeated complaints from a
half-dozen doctors and lawyers begging them to take action, Duntsch continued
to practice medicine. Doctors brought in to clean up his surgeries decried his
“surgical misadventures,” according to hospital records. His mistakes were
obvious and well-documented. And still it took the Texas Medical Board more
than a year to stop Duntsch—a year in which he kept bringing into the operating
room patients who ended up seriously injured or dead.

In Duntsch’s case, we see the weakness of Texas’ unregulated
system of health care, a system built to protect doctors and hospitals. And a
system in which there’s no way to know for sure if your doctor is dangerous.

Up until 2003, medical care in Texas
was regulated by a system of checks. Hospital management, the court system and
the Texas Medical Board formed a web of regulation that penalized and prevented
bad care.

But in the past 10 years, a series of conservative reforms
have severely limited patients’ options for holding doctors and hospitals
accountable for bad care. In 2003, the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature
capped pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $250,000.
Even if a plaintiff wins the maximum award, after you pay your lawyer and your
experts and go through, potentially, years of trial, not much is left.

The Legislature has also made suing hospitals difficult.
Texas law states­ that hospitals are liable for damages caused by doctors in
their facilities only if the plaintiff can prove that the hospital acted with
“malice”—that is, the hospital knew of extreme risk and ignored it—in
credentialing a doctor. But the Legislature hindered plaintiffs’ cases even
more by allowing hospitals to, in most cases, keep credentialing information
confidential. In effect, plaintiffs have to prove a very tough case without
access to the necessary hospital records. This is an almost impossible standard
to meet, and it has left hospitals immune to the actions of whatever doctors
they bring on. Hospitals can get all of the benefit of an expensive surgeon
practicing in their facility and little of the exposure. This has freed
hospitals from the fear of litigation, but it’s also removed the financial
motivation for policing their own physicians.

The medical malpractice cap and the near-immunity for
hospitals snapped two threads from the regulatory web. What remained was the
Texas Medical Board.

Meanwhile, medical societies and tort reform business groups
say that the state has seen an influx of doctors as a result of this “tort
reform” law. I suppose they count Dr.
Christopher Duntsch as one of them. Yet a recent Center for Justice & Democracy study confirms that there has never been a link between a state’s legal system and where
doctors choose to practice. This is according
to virtually every academic and government study every done on this
topic and the actual experiences of states. That would include Texas where, “according
to the latest academic research, the rate of increase in Texas of physicians
engaged in direct patient care was lower
after caps passed, and two specialties (OB/GYN and orthopedic surgery) grew
more quickly before caps were enacted than after.” In fact, Texas is now currently facing an
urgent doctor shortage.

July 18, 2013

There are a few legal awards and settlements in the news
today that don’t have a lot in common - except they all kinda share that “wow”
factor. Let’s review:

For altogether creepiness, there’s the $35 million judgement against
Henri Duyzend, a Washington State dentist who “performed nearly 2,200 root
canals on about 500 patients in the five years before he retired in 2007.” Twenty-nine of these patients sued and the
arbitration judge found that Dr. Duyzend “was negligent, failed to obtain informed
consent from patients, committed fraud and violated the Washington Consumer
Protection Act.” Many patients ended up
with failed root canals, failed crowns, pain and infections.

Continuing down the creepiness road, we are leaning today
that Penn State has agreed to pay
“about $60 million to settle most
of the personal injury claims filed by men who alleged they were sexually
abused by Jerry Sandusky when they were children. … According to the [Wall Street]
Journal, Penn State has reached agreements in about 25 of 30 cases.” Let’s hope these funds help these
victims find some peace.

Meanwhile, referencing our earlier coverage of Johnson &
Johnson's recall in 2010 of “more than 135 million packages of children’s and infant’s
Motrin, Tylenol, Benadryl and Zyrtec for possible bacterial contamination and
the presence of small metal parts” produced at its McNeil Fort Washington, PA
plant.,
we now learn that J&J has agreed to pay $22.9 million to settle a class action lawsuit from investors
stemming from this disaster. Writes Reuters,

Shareholders filed a proposed class action against the
company … saying Johnson & Johnson cut back on
quality-control measures prior to the recalls, and took steps to conceal that
from investors and the public. Once the extent of the recalls came to light,
share prices fell, investors said.

The company was also accused of trying to avoid publicity by
concealing facts about the recalls, including the orchestration of a
"phantom recall" of Motrin products, in which third-party contractors
covertly removed suspect containers from stores.

According to the FDA, this was “the largest recall of
children's medicine in the agency's history.”
And of course, J&J denies it did anything wrong.

May 13, 2013

Admittedly, it’s not exactly like watching someone get thrown to the lions, but I think we all need to acknowledge that watching today’s most popular sports means witnessing the slow disintegration of athletes' brains.

It was only a matter of time before a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against the NHL alleging the same kinds of brain injuries (plus opiate addiction), that have led about 4,200 American football players to sue the NFL.
It is now being reported that,

The family of Derek Boogaard has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the National Hockey League.
It contends that the N.H.L. is responsible for the physical trauma and brain damage that Boogaard sustained during six seasons as one of the league’s top enforcers, and for the addiction to prescription painkillers that marked his final two years.

Boogaard was under contract to the Rangers when he was found dead of an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers and alcohol on May 13, 2011. He was 28. He was posthumously found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., a brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head.

“To distill this to one sentence,” said William Gibbs, a lawyer for the Boogaards, “you take a young man, you subject him to trauma, you give him pills for that trauma, he becomes addicted to those pills, you promise to treat him for that addiction, and you fail.”

The N.H.L., through a spokesman, declined to comment Sunday.

Soccer players may have it even worse. It was reported late last year that “even [soccer players] who have never experienced a concussion still have changes in the white matter of their brains, likely from routine and unprotected headers.” In other words, “even blows to the head that aren’t considered concussions may lead to traumatic brain injury.”

While concussions have long been a part of professional sports such as boxing and football, researchers are still struggling to define concussions clinically, and research into brain changes resulting from repetitive blows to the head is a relatively new area of research. “[Brain damage from repetitive blows] would have tremendous public health implications,” says Dr. Jeffrey Bazarian, an associate professor of emergency medicine at URMC. “If players are damaging their brains, it is a large public health issue because everyone, even at a young age, hits their head like this. But right now we really don’t have enough information.”

Bazarian was not involved with the study, but has also used DTI to assess mild brain injury in high school football and hockey players.

Unfortunately, many high schools seem unwilling to take this problem as seriously as they should. Just last week, there was, “[a]n alarming study about teenage athletes." Specifically:

Doctors say even light concussions, if untreated, can cause severe harm to the brain like memory loss, major depression and even Alzheimer’s later in life.
But now, a new survey released this week shows young players won’t report a concussion, even if they feel the headache and dizziness that could come with a big hit on the field.…Nearly half of the students surveyed said they would not tell their coach if they had concussion symptoms.

And when it comes to womens’ sports, like Lacrosse, there’s another problem. Coaches, it seems, think helmets would make the sport, I dunno, less "beautiful". So, when “two state legislators in lacrosse-crazy Maryland introduced a bill this year to require helmets,” the coaches actually protested.

"The beauty of the girls game is it's a lot more finesse, not bodies slamming and slashing and stick violations," said Peter Bogle, who coaches a co-op team in St. Charles. “My take is once you start with a helmet, girls are going to think, ‘Now I can go harder.’”
…

Nonetheless, U.S. Lacrosse is planning to draft technical standards for female protective headgear. That should be done by early 2014, [Ann Carpenetti, managing director of game administration for U.S. Lacrosse] said, allowing sporting goods companies to develop models that, with luck, might be available by 2016.

She added, however, that she expects any new headgear to remain optional for the foreseeable future.
“I don't think there's a silver bullet,” she said. “Nobody thinks there's a silver bullet to concussions.”

January 18, 2013

In her always hilarious New York Times column, the brilliant Gail
Collins wrote yesterday:

"But we still need to wring a useful
lesson out of all this [i.e., the Lance Armstrong confession]. Let’s consider
the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team. Between 1996 and 2004, our American
mail system invested an estimated $40 million in this venture, in return for
which Armstrong and his teammates rode around with the Postal Service insignia
on their shirts.

This would be the same Postal
Service that lost $16 billion last year, and I believe I speak for every
stamp-buyer in the nation when I say: What?"

I sure hope the post office gets its money back, if only to
stop its most recent junk mail fundraising scheme. Everybody else is sure gonna
try. And indeed, the U.S. Justice Department has already been negotiating with
Armstrong over a federal whistleblower lawsuit brought by Armstrong’s former teammate Floyd Landis,
alleging “that Armstrong and team managers defrauded the U.S. government when
they accepted money from the U.S. Postal Service.” (See more details here.)

The suit stems from the Postal Service
contract, which “required that the team refrain from using
performance-enhancing drugs” and the now undeniable fraud amounts to a violation of the Federal
False Claims Act. This suit could
cost Armstrong nearly $100 million, and if he does lose, I sure hope all the money gets earmarked for the U.S. Postal Service. But unfortunately, Armstrong apparently
defrauded many people and companies who also want their cut – like insurance
companies - so its unclear what damages might be available for any of these parties.

Oprah Winfrey interviewed Lance Armstrong under camera
lights this week, but Dallas attorney Jeffrey Tillotson is the only person to
have interviewed the disgraced cyclist under oath. He could also be the first
to sue Armstrong after his confession to Winfrey.

Tillotson said there could be a lawsuit as early as Friday
on behalf of his client, Dallas-based SCA Promotions, a sports insurance
company. SCA had to pay Armstrong bonuses for three Tour de France victories on
behalf of Tailwind Sports, which owned the U.S. Postal Service team for which
Armstrong raced. …

Tillotson questioned Armstrong in Austin on Nov. 30, 2005,
during a deposition resulting from SCA Promotions’ attempts to keep from paying
the cyclist $12 million for winning the Tour de France in 2002, 2003 and 2004.
SCA had insured the bonuses on behalf of Tailwind Sports.

Then there is the suit by Britain's Sunday Times, owned
by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which has already filed legal papers over the
$500,000 it paid to Armstrong in 2006 to settle a libel lawsuit “after it reprinted claims from a
book in 2004 that he took performance-enhancing drugs.” It wants its money back, interest
and costs –about $1.6 million.

After retiring from professional cycling following his
seventh tour win, Armstrong launched his much-publicized racing comeback at the
Tour Down Under in 2009 and also competed in the event the following two years.

The SA government has never detailed just how much he was
paid for his appearances, which dramatically increased national and
international interest in the race.

Mr. Weatherill said the government would continue to keep
the figure secret as disclosing the amount would reveal to others just how much
the government was prepared to pay in support of major events.

Like, say, the U.S. Post Office? And here is another idea. How about ending these government/sports sponsorship deals. As Gail Collins put it,

There still are sponsorship deals floating all around the
federal government. (The Army has one with the National Hot Rod Association.)
Nobody seems to keep track of exactly how much they add up to. Maybe this one
little area could be a staging ground for bipartisan accord. Republicans and
Democrats could join together to ban the use of federal taxpayer dollars for
sponsorship of sports events. Then they would be so pleased with their progress
that they could move on and pass a genuine budget. The Lance Armstrong debacle
would have a point!

January 02, 2013

If you’re a college football fan, great week, right? The bowls, the parades, a freshman Heisman Trophy winner. Hate to break the holiday buzz, but ...

Today, Pennsylvania’s Governor Tom Corbett is expected to announce that the state will be suing the NCAA under antitrust laws, over “sanctions imposed against Penn State University in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal.” Writes the Associated Press,

The NCAA sanctions, which were agreed to by the university in July, included a $60 million fine that would be used nationally to finance child abuse prevention grants. The sanctions also included a four-year bowl game ban for the university's marquee football program, reduced football scholarships and the forfeiture of 112 wins but didn't include a suspension of the football program, the so-called death penalty.
…

State and congressional lawmakers from Pennsylvania have objected to using the Penn State fine to finance activities in other states. Penn State has already made the first $12 million payment, and an NCAA task force is deciding how it should be spent.
The NCAA, which declined to comment Tuesday on the planned lawsuit, has said at least a quarter of the money would be spent in Pennsylvania.

Republican U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent called that an "unacceptable and unsatisfactory" response by the NCAA to a request from the state's U.S. House delegation that the whole $60 million be distributed to causes within the state.

So while that’s going on, “one of New York's most prestigious private schools,” Poly Prep Country Day School, agreed last week,

[t]o settle a landmark lawsuit claiming its longtime football coach sexually abused hundreds of boys over a 25-year period and that officials covered up the assaults for decades.
The settlement ends a three-year legal and public relations battle that divided parents and alumni and turned the elite Brooklyn school into a symbol of institutional indifference to sexual abuse in youth sports. The explosive suit, filed in 2009, claimed officials at the Dyker Heights prep school knew that coach Phil Foglietta was a sexual predator, but ignored repeated complaints during his 25 years at the school because they didn't want to jeopardize the institution's athletic reputation and fund-raising efforts."

And speaking of New York, just a week before that, a lawsuit was filed in Manhattan by three former players at Riverside Church’s “prestigious basketball program,” who say its founder, Ernest Lorch, “assaulted them on the church’s Morningside Heights campus and during team trips,” and “church officials failed to properly supervise” Lorch, who died in May. Writes the New York Daily News,

The abuse took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s, leaving [the three plaintiffs] Walker, McDuffen and McCray with “severe physical, psychological and emotional injuries,” the suit says. The lawsuit identifies Walker as the man who told authorities in Massachusetts that Lorch had abused him; Lorch was indicted on a sexual abuse charge as a result of Walker’s testimony before a Massachusetts grand jury. Lorch was later deemed not competent to be extradited to Massachusetts.

We’ve saidbefore that the civil justice system has become an extremely important vehicle for abuse victims to obtain justice. Let’s hope the victims get some peace.

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